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THE 

I N G D O M 

OF THE 

JNVISIBLE 

"^ By 
MARY PLATT PARMELE 







} 



THE KINGDOM 
OF THE INVISIBLE 



wm 



THE KINGDOM OF 
THE INVISIBLE 




By MARY PLATT PARMELE 



A PAPER READ BEFORE THE 
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON CLUB 
DECEMBER EIGHTEENTH 
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND ONE 



NEW YORK 



VING PRESS 






THE LIBRARY ©F 
©GNGRESS, 

TWO COHBB hECSVEJ 
OoPYTOBKr ENTRY 

o/XXo, H 

>py a 



Copyright, 1902 
By Mary Platt Parmele 




%^t B-tttgtiom of tfie 

WHEN the soul of man was 
placed upon a fair young 
earth to work out the des- 
tiny of a human race, it was an ex- 
periment attended with much dan- 
ger, and we are told by Milton, the 
veracious chronicler of this event, 
was watched with many forebodings 
by the Heavenly Host. If arch- 
angels had fallen into such an abyss 
out of heaven, what might be the 
fate of man — lower even than the 
angels — upon that insignificant, un- 
protected ball circling about the sun! 
The tree of knowledge must be care- 
fully guarded, and its fruit doled out 

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in infinitesimal morsels, for this child 
of earth must not suspect the magni- 
tude of his inheritance, nor dream of 
the vast forces and opportunities 
lying all about him. The windows of 
his soul must be thickly curtained, es- 
pecially that one, the highest of all — 
the watch-tower — which looks out 
upon infinity. So, while the house 
prepared for this Infant of Days was 
a marvel of ingenuity and of adapta- 
tion to his needs, it was only a beauti- 
fully constructed prison, designed to 
screen him from the universe, not to 
reveal it. Instead of having windows 
on all sides, giving ample opportunity 
to look out upon the fair creation of 
which he was a part, there were only 
five little openings — mere crevices — 
through which there struggled and 
flickered pulsating streams which he 
came to know as sensations. A won- 
derful network of filaments, which 



of t^ e 91nfef gf Me 

we should now call telephonic, con- 
nected each of these receivers at the 
windows with the soul within, and 
gave report of what they saw, heard 
and felt, and consciousness fed eager- 
ly upon these nourishing streams, and 
grew apace; and the royal infant in 
the house of clay found it very pleas- 
ant, was content, and never suspected 
that he was a prisoner at all. 

Then, with a capacity for omni- 
science which was Godlike, he began 
to piece together the poor little mea- 
gre fragments of truth which pene- 
trated his prison-house, and to con- 
struct a system of knowledge. An 
appetite was awakened transcending 
anything he had before experienced — 
an appetite to know, to understand ; 
and then as he found that with in- 
crease of knowledge there came also 
increase of power — that, in fact, 
knowledge was power — the hunger 

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Cty e Kngaom 



became a craving, and he grew im- 
patient at the smallness of the 
windows. 

The one called Sight, the most 
far-reaching — the only one, in fact, 
which penetrated beyond the con- 
fines of his earthly abode — was the 
narrowest of all — only one little oc- 
tave of space. Whereas, its near 
neighbor, which admitted what was 
called Sound, measured eleven oc- 
taves, seven of which delighted his 
soul with music ! 

But he had found that " things 
seen are mightier than things heard, " 
so he set about the task of artifici- 
ally enlarging the capacity of this 
window ; and lo ! where had been, as 
he believed, nothing, he found form, 
color and rushing activities. A drop 
of water was teeming with life like 
an ocean, and the stars were doubled 
in number ! 

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of tfre gnfttgtftle 

The authority of the senses was 
profoundly shaken. They had been 
implicitly trusted. Humanity had 
believed that all there was, it saw; 
and behold ! here all the time there 
had been existing a world of matter — 
of substance which could be weighed, 
measured and counted; an unsus- 
pected world within a world, with a 
marvelous and perfect economy of its 
own. Was this the end? Would 
more enlargement bring more worlds ? 
Strange doubts came into his soul. 

But the senses held their ground. 
A very august thing called Science 
had come into existence; and Science 
based all of its conclusions upon re- 
ports sent in by these revered old 
teachers. To be sure, these reports 
were found to be misleading and 
needed much revising and correcting; 
but after allowing for reflection and 
deflection, and for refraction, and for 

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imperfect recording, and for time re- 
quired in the transmission of the 
message, something approximating 
to the truth was found ; and Science 
patiently labored on over her task 
of classifying the facts and unraveling 
the mysteries of creation. 

The being within was aroused. 
Things must be explained — account- 
ed for. What was light ? What was 
color ? Heat ? What was sound ? And 
what this strange substance in amber 
which, when awakened by friction, 
would draw bits of matter hungrily to 
itself ? There was imperative demand 
for answer to these questions, and to 
some of them Science gave reply. 

Heat was a mysterious substance, 
a subtle fluid called Caloric, which 
penetrated matter, its presence pro- 
ducing warmth, its absence cold. 
Light also was a physical emanation. 
Streams of infinitesimal light-arrows, 
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of 1 1) e ginbfjSible 

which were rushing to us from their 
home in the sun, bathed the world in 
radiance. Obviously, these had only 
to be variously tinted to give the 
chromatic scale. So there it was, 
simple and snug, caloric in one reser- 
voir and light-arrows in another. 

But, alas ! nothing in the domain 
of knowledge remains snug ! There 
is no more difficult task than attempt- 
ing to keep your mental furnishings 
in order. A distinguished scholar 
upon being asked, some years ago, 
what scientific books in the library of 
the Glasgow University had better be 
thrown out, replied: "All not writ- 
ten in the last decade." The last 
four, or perhaps I should say five, 
decades, have rendered many libraries 
useless. There has been in this 
period an upheaval of the very foun- 
dations of knowledge, and this has 
been wrought chiefly by making the 
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invisible visible — not to the physical 
eye, but to that more perfect organ, 
the eye of the mind — and thus bring- 
ing to the consciousness of man a 
supersensible world, a world incon- 
ceivably minute, but clothed with a 
majesty and a power inconceivably 
great. 

One of the early causes leading to 
this upheaval was the discovery of an 
unsuspected source of disease in the 
presence of minute animal and vege- 
table organisms, which, with incred- 
ible swiftness, were reproduced in 
incredible numbers, and feasted dur- 
ing their more or less prolonged ex- 
istence upon certain organs for which 
they had a liking in the human body. 

Then the companion-discovery 
was made — that there were other 
micro-organisms whose business it 
was to exterminate these invading 
hosts ; and that at the entrance to the 

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of t^e 91 ti i) i is if b 1 1 



throat, stationed like forts on either 
side, and at other strategic points in 
the human body, these were perma- 
nently garrisoned to protect the vital 
parts from such invasion. The deepest 
cause of disease was laid bare, and 
the science of medicine was trans- 
formed. 

But these creatures, malevolent 
and beneficent, who had been fighting 
their battles since the dawn of earthly 
life could be weighed, measured and 
counted, so were only on the thresh- 
hold of the world invisible. They are, 
in fact, the last we see as the sensible 
vanishes into 'the supersensible cre- 
ation. But Cause was beginning to 
be tracked to its home in the invisible. 

Then another assault upon the 
outposts of mistaken beliefs was 
made by Herbert Spencer by pre- 
cisely reversing this process and 
proving that the invisible was deeply 
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rooted in the visible. One feature 
of the neat classification of the good 
old time was the separateness of the 
various departments of knowledge, 
each in a package properly labeled 
and complete in itself. To the orderly 
mind nothing could have been nicer. 
There was but one objection to it — 
it was not true ! In the first place, 
there were two grand divisions, a 
material world and a spiritual world, 
between which a great gulf was fixed, 
cleanly, properly and. forever separat- 
ing them. Science was the priestess 
of one, and Religion of the other; 
and the poles were not wider apart 
than they ! 

In similar fashion, the sciences 
had each its own system of laws, 
separate and distinct. The laws 
governing the chemical atoms, and 
controlling their affinities and reac- 
tions, had nothing whatever to do 

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of tfr e flnftf gf ble 

with those with which Physiology- 
was dealing; while these were of a 
different sort altogether from those 
relating to the sciences of heat, light, 
sound and electricity, which again 
had nothing whatever in common 
with each other ; while Psychology, 
a sad and homeless wanderer be- 
longing neither to heaven nor earth, 
claimed a melancholy distinction in 
having not the remotest connection 
with any of the rest; because, for- 
sooth, while they were all dealing 
with matter, human consciousness was 
the sublimer field of her gropings. 

It was Herbert Spencer who dis- 
posed of this fallacy. When he placed 
the facts of human consciousness 
upon a physiological basis, he brought 
Psychology down from where it had 
long been suspended — in the upper 
ether of pure thought — and planted 
it firmly upon a foundation of matter. 
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Instead of seeking to penetrate the 
mysteries of sensation, thought and 
emotion by an ethereal pathway, he 
discovered a material one — a frail 
bridge which linked that nebulous 
region to the prosaic continent of 
scientific truth. This connecting 
bridge was the nervous system. When 
" states of mind" were found to be 
correlated with certain definite move- 
ments of physical atoms, movements 
which might be mathematically stated, 
not only had Psychology joined the 
family of material sciences, but it 
began to seem as if it might be only 
the subtle and vanishing end of that 
one science to which it was so closely 
allied — Physiology / 

This was startling and subversive, 
but less so than another discovery 
which was at hand ; another and 
deeper truth which was going to tear 
down every wall of separation, and 
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of tfr e gitxtugible 

bring all existing things, material and 
spiritual, under one compelling and 
universal law — a law embedded so 
deep in the heart of all created things 
that it must be the Law of Laws ! 

It was found that in the phe- 
nomena of nature, under all seeming 
and being, in things solid and things 
fluid, things palpable and impalpable, 
ponderable and imponderable, the 
final cause is an atomic movement. 
And not alone that, but things are 
what they are, solid, liquid, fluid or 
gaseous, or what we name heat, light,- 
sound or electricity, simply because 
of the character of the action of this 
inscrutable energy which pulsates and 
throbs through all created things! 

This fell upon unheeding ears. 
Men were too busy with realities to 
stop and think of intellectual phan- 
toms. But when it was declared 
that the solidity of the earth was a 

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fiction, that it was, in fact, only a 
mass of swinging, oscillating atoms 
never at rest and never in contact, 
then there came a voice from the 
citadel, that last stronghold of medi- 
ocrity. Common Sense, that precious 
possession of the average mind, came 
to the rescue and pronounced it 
transcendental, which means a play- 
thing for the visionary. How could 
such a theory be proved? And of 
what practical use would it be if it 
could? 

Let no one accuse me of under- 
valuing common sense. I love it. 
And so I do infancy. I revere it. 
And so I do the multiplication table. 
More than that, I know that when it 
acts as the handmaiden to sense of 
an uncommon sort it may become 
genius. Yet, I must insist that com- 
mon sense has always made a mis- 
take when it has attempted to define 
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of t^e 91ftbigiMe 

the limits of the Infinite ! Common 
sense derided the still small voice 
which was coming from the heart of 
the granite. But for all that, that 
whisper was bringing a sublime reve- 
lation. It proclaimed that there was 
a soul in matter. It declared that 
all the potencies of life exist in what 
we have called dead matter; that 
there is no dead matter. It meant 
that in all the wide created universe 
there's nothing dead! 

But this was only the beginning 
of the revelation. The atom was not 
alone throbbing with life, but with 
rhythmic life ! There was music and 
poetry in these atomic souls; and 
atoms attuned to the same rhythm, 
singing the same song, — and here is 
the marvel, the wonder of it all ! — 
atoms singing the same song have 
an irresistible affinity for each other / 
— and all the varieties of the material 
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creation must have been brought into 
groups by this sympathetic hunger 
of like for like ! 

There is not time even to hint at 
the vast revelation of which this is 
the alphabet, a revelation in which 
all loves, human and Divine, all 
things, material and spiritual, seem 
to find a reasonable solution. What- 
ever the problem, in whatever the sci- 
ence, however it may be veiled and 
disguised in technicalities, its solution 
lies at last in the facts of motion and 
its rhythmic affinities. Life is mo- 
tion. More life is more motion ; and 
pari-passu with more motion, there 
must exist a finer element in which it 
may act. And so we have started 
upon a path inevitably leading into 
that separate realm which we call 
Spiritual ! The wall of separation 
between the two worlds is — not 
broken down, for it never existed 

t8 



of tfre 9|nbigible 

— it has vanished, melted into 
thin air. 

And this is only one of the revo- 
lutionary changes following in the 
wake of this atomic revelation. At 
one stroke, the origin and genesis of 
man is removed from protoplasm far 
back to cosmic dust. It has taken 
an eternity of seons to travel it ; but 
at one end of this long journey is a 
simple atom — an atom with a soul 
tethered to the divine heart, — and 
at the other end that most complex 
of all organisms — man — who as he 
has climbed the ladder of being, in 
every stage, at every step of his 
evolutionary development, has been 
drawn on and on, by this same innate 
hunger for a divine perfection of 
rhythm ! 

Like all truths so heavily freighted 
with meaning, once it commenced to 
unfold, this expanded swiftly. Not 
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alone the ultimate particles of gross 
matter, but those of the atmosphere 
and the ether were subject to this 
law ; and sound, heat, light and elec- 
tricity were only more and more in- 
tense forms of atomic vibration. 

The messenger bearing sound, 
traveling only at the rate of about 
1,000 feet a second, might make his 
leisurely journey in the air. But the 
angel of light who, as he speeds 
with his message to the eye, trav- 
erses nearly 200,000 miles a second, 
needs a rarer element for the vibra- 
tion of his swift wings, so retires into 
the ether. And for a brief period 
the ear responds synchronically to 
the aerial music, and we say we hear, 
and for a still briefer period the eye 
synchronically catches the ethereal 
strain, and we "see." 

But in all this transaction observe, 
it is the energy which is the reality, 
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of tfr e gittftf gible 

and its perception is merely an inci- 
dent. Sound, heat and light are 
no longer objective realities any more 
than are the progressive markings on 
the thermometer. They are only 
way-stations in a journey which, so 
far as we know, has no end. They 
happen to be the stages at which an 
ascending column of energy is able 
to penetrate the human organism 
through three narrow crevices; a fact 
which reflects upon the limitations of 
the organism, not the energy, which 
is probably ready at a thousand inter- 
mediate points to flood the conscious- 
ness with new sensation, and they are 
no less sound, heat and light before 
and after they reached this particular 
stage of vibratory motion to which 
the perceiving organ is synchronically 
attuned; and to the all-perceiving 
mind all energy, at every stage, must 
be color, sound, heat and light; and 

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wherever there is life there is motion, 
and wherever there is motion there 
music and radiance, and every atom 
is vocal, and the stars do sing to- 
gether, and all created things do 
unite in a rejoicing song ! 

But the most profoundly sugges- 
tive attribute of the atom is its 
sympathetic quality, which seems not 
only to explain all the complexities 
of human relations, but irresistibly 
and convincingly spiritualizes what 
we call gravitation in the universe 
of matter, and what we know as 
religion in the universe of soul. Is 
it an accident, does it only happen 
that light and gravitation are dimin- 
ished with increase of distance (the 
one in brilliancy and the other in 
power) at precisely the same ratio 
and by the same mathematical law? 
Or is this an indication of a near 
kinship in these two manifestations 

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of rhythmic energy ? And if individ- 
ual atoms are drawn to each other by 
identity of rhythm, then why must 
they not be so drawn in their masses ? 
And why is not gravitation simply 
the hunger of a rhythmic affinity? 
And if sympathetic vibration be the 
secret of all affinities, why need we 
look further for an explanation for 
the eternal hunger of the human soul 
for its Divine source ? And why is 
not the religious impulse in humanity 
simply the transcendant expression 
of this law? 

But it was only an elect few who 
heard these heart-beats of the Divine 
in dense matter. Prof. Tyndall, who 
seemed to hear them more clearly 
than any one else, said that these 
atoms were not gay triflers singing 
and dancing in space. They were 
disguised giants, and terribly in earn- 
est. If they needed more space for 

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the wider and swifter swing of their 
vibrations, walls of granite could not 
contain them. And men, seeing the 
riven boulder, or the toppling wall 
wrenched from its foundations, said : 
"'Tis the work of the frost," or "of 
that growing sapling;" and were not 
amazed ! But Tyndall, with clearer 
vision, said: If such be the energy 
existing in its lowest form, while it 
sleeps in stone, what must it be in its 
higher and intenser manifestations ? 
We are compelled to believe that 
by sounding the sympathetic note of 
some such rarer stream as may exist, 
an energy might be evoked sufficient 
to tear the stars from their orbits ! 
These are not his words, but they 
correctly summarize the startling 
utterances of the great scientist. 

But, while interesting to some 
speculative minds, all this, like that 
other wild theory of the non-solidity 
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of tfr e gittftf gf Me 

of the earth, was absolutely incapable 
of proof, and merely an opportunity 
for intellectual gymnastics for which 
few had time or taste. But the Mills 
of the Gods were grinding, and were 
grinding more " exceeding fine " than 
they had ever done before. When 
Science turned its searchlight upon 
the spectrum, it discovered that upon 
both sides of this small octave of 
color there existed invisible rays ; 
that beyond the more sluggish en- 
ergy at the red end, these invisible 
rays being able to vibrate in the at- 
mosphere, as was to be expected, 
produced heat. While at the swifter 
and ethereal end, where the violet 
was singing its intenser song, their 
action was not heat-producing, but 
chemical and more vital. 

But both were realities, and both 
were beyond the range of human 
vision. Science was on the verge of 

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one of her most momentous triumphs. 
It came swiftly. The earth was not 
solid ! The most scoffing and skep- 
tical could see for himself that it was 
not. That impossible, that absurd 
theory, that theory which was an 
offense to all sane thinking was scien- 
tifically demonstrated ! A swifter en- 
ergy, moving in a finer medium, only 
a step beyond the capacity of the 
the human eye, was able to convert 
dense matter into gauze ! 

Amazing as this was and is, the 
implications it brings with it are 
more startling still. To the human 
eye, so finely constructed that it 
could respond to the invisible rays, 
and could discern just one color more 
beyond the violet, to such an eye 
nothing would have been solid. We 
should look through the interatomic 
spaces as through the meshes of lace. 
And, if this be true, is a long step 
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of tfre 3jttbii3fble 

required to conceive of an order of 
beings who do so regard matter? and 
to whom its interatomic spaces are 
not alone windows through which 
they may gaze, but open doors 
through which they may pass to and 
fro ? Can any limit be placed to the 
possibilities of being, which are im- 
plied by the Rontgen Ray ? 

And what is this Rontgen Ray? 
How does it act, when, as is 
claimed, it destroys the germ of can- 
cer? The newspaper this morning 
says it does so " by producing heat 
and electricity." Amazing dullness ! 
These may both be present ; prob- 
ably are, with other more or less 
efficient manifestations of energy. 
Such an explanation might have been 
satisfying in the days of " Caloric " 
and "light-arrows," but not to-day. 
It is simply because the invisible ray 
is a swifter and more subtle form of 
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motion that it does this. In its 
capacity to penetrate finer and more 
subtle recesses of space, it consumes 
— not alone the visible tissues — 
but their invisible foundations, laden 
with the germs of vicious life in its 
incipiency (for the beginnings of 
good and of evil are " exceeding 
small"). It simply burns them up, 
as we do an infected house. But 
this consuming fire is not appreciable 
as heat. The sensitive nerves give 
no report of it to the consciousness. 
As wonderful as this is, amazing 
as it is to have the power of vision 
so quickened and intensified, it is less 
important, less startling, than the 
inseparable companion-truth which 
comes with it — that just beyond the 
frontiers of human sight there exist 
these more vital realties ! Now, if 
this be true of sight, we are justified 
in believing it must also be true of 
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of tfre ginftigihle 

all conscious perception. And that 
on the nether side of every sense, 
there must be the same extension 
into more intense forms of what has 
vanished into nothingness. 

We are accustomed to think of the 
invisible as nebulous and structure- 
less. But Nature does not do her work 
in that way. Doubtless perfection of 
structure increases with its subtlety ; 
and organized structure is already 
far advanced when it first reports it- 
self to the eye, or even to the lens. If 
proof of this were needed, it is found 
in the fact that in the earliest stages 
of embryonic life, the most minute, 
physical characteristics of the future 
man already exist. Even the pattern 
of the spiral tracings on his finger tips 
is already unchangeably complete. 

Now we know the pathways by 
which heat, light and sound travel to 
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the brain, and where and how they 
give their report. But how do faith, 
hope, love, anger, remorse, how do 
thought and all the emotions of the 
soul reach there ? Do they rush in 
headlong and disorderly haste across 
a structureless chasm? Has Nature 
made such splendid provision for the 
use of the senses, and provided no 
pathways for these sublimer streams 
on their way to the conscious soul? 
Once there, they report themselves 
to the brain by the same rhythmic 
cipher as that used by the senses; 
but are there no channels which have 
conveyed these more vital streams of 
energy to the consciousness of man ? 
In other words, does the human 
organism cease where it vanishes from 
sight? or does it, by natural grada- 
tions, melt into an invisible structure, 
finer, more sensitive, more vital, 
through which there flow — across a 

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more ethereal nervous system, and 
into a subtler brain — streams of en- 
ergy as much more rarefied than 
sound and light, as these transcend 
the pulsating streams which pour 
over the brink of Niagara? 

Does such a body exist — detach- 
able, but not detached — -vitally con- 
nected for a time with its gross and 
visible partner, and the source of its 
best doing and achieving? Is this 
that subliminal, subconscious self, 
which, with intermittent flashes, illu- 
mines man with a wisdom not his 
own ? And are we expanding or con- 
tracting this finer habitation of the 
soul, according as we dwell in it or 
desert it ? And is this the abode of 
the Divine germ ? and the home of 
conscience, and of all that makes for 
exalted being, and for Immortality? 
And is this the indestructible part of 
man, in which the soul is clothed 
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when it passes through the portal 
we call Death ? Wise and prophetic 
souls, from Paul to Emerson, have 
affirmed something very like this. 

The fact of its invisibility — what 
does that mean t Nothing, abso- 
lutely nothing. To the beings at- 
tuned to those finer harmonies, it 
may be shining in such light "as 
never was on sea or land, 5 ' and 
radiant and ample, or dim and 
shrunken, according to the soul-life 
it contains and expresses. 

We know that an objective crea- 
tion transcends our power of vision 
upon both sides of the spectrum. 
We also know that we might have 
been created upon a scale of being 
in which we should only begin to see 
and hear at the point where now all 
fades into darkness and silence, and 
that our world then would have 
been no less real and objective than 
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of tfr e flnfrf atfrle 

it is now; and that our present ob- 
jective world would then have been 
to us practically non-existent. And 
if, as Milton says, " Millions of spirit- 
ual creatures walk the earth to-day 
unseen by man," it is because the 
things I have been trying to say are 
true. And it is perfectly conceiv- 
able that material beings created 
upon a more sublimated plane than 
we, and with powers immeasurably 
transcending ours may be occupying 
the same space which we think we 
have appropriated, and not neces- 
sarily be more aware of our presence 
than are we of theirs. 

If it is unthinkable to us that 
highly organized beings, leading lives 
of more profound significance than 
ours, should exist in the interatomic 
spaces, it is simply because of the 
grossness and egotism of our point 
of view. We forget that the ocean 
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of ether, which pours through matter 
as through a sieve, affords- abundant 
space for beings to whom it is the 
natural element. And it is evident 
that we also fail to realize the spa- 
ciousness of the minute. And when 
we pass into that other life, so veiled 
in mystery, we may be not only be- 
wildered by scores of new openings 
between our infrequent senses, but 
we may also awaken to a new con- 
ception of space, by which centre has 
all the possibilities of circumference J 
Indeed, what we already know com- 
pels such belief. 

But some will ask of what use are 
these wild speculations? What has 
this new gospel of matter done for 
practical living ? The reply is that it 
has done two things which the most 
utilitarian must acknowledge entitle 
it to some consideration. It has 
revolutionized human thought, and 
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of tfre 3|nfaigible 

it has afforded a new basis for all 
practicalities and all utilities. Every 
man who receives a cable message 
to-day, or a wireless report from mid- 
ocean, or hears the voice of his friend 
a thousand miles away, or sees the 
deeply embedded bit of metal which 
is destroying the life of his child is 
reaping the benefit from these wild 
speculations concerning a transcen- 
dant world. And to the part of 
humanity which thinks and cares, it 
has been a profound experience to 
see all truths and all paths converg- 
ing into a divine unity ! 

The unity is not yet complete. 
Religion has not yet fallen on the 
neck of Science, nor has Science em- 
braced the feet and kissed the robe of 
Religion ! Many mistakes will have 
to be admitted by both before that 
is done. But it is coming. Not long 
ago they were glaring at each other 

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across an impassable gulf. Then 
they tolerated each other. Now, 
each regards the other as an admir- 
able person, holding some mistaken 
views ; and it needs small prophetic 
vision to see that the time is not far 
distant when they must embrace, and 
religion of necessity be scientific, and 
science by equal necessity be re- 
ligious ! 

We discover that the message 
brought to the world nineteen cen- 
turies ago was so transforming, not 
because of the things read into it by 
Bishops and Church Councils and 
Creed-makers, but because it brought 
a new key to heaven, the same — the 
very same key, which, strangely 
enough Science is now compelled to 
use in unlocking the mysteries of a 
physical creation. And at last we 
stand before the secret of the Uni- 
verse, and LOVE is the binding 
36 



of tfr e %n*i$iblt 

power which holds the suns in their 
courses, and the " Golden key which 
ope's the Palace of Eternity ! " 

So, in every department of knowl- 
edge and thought the unexpected 
has happened, and all because of 
these searchings into an invisible and 
transcendent world ! Science has 
reluctantly found out God ; Religion, 
as reluctantly, has found herself 
linked to gross matter ; Physics has 
melted into metaphysics; Metaphysics 
has glided into physics ; Science has 
become occult; Philosophy, in bewild- 
erment, finds herself growing mystic 
and spiritistic ; matter has been spirit- 
ualized ; an over-spiritualized heaven 
has been reasonably linked to earth ; 
and we find that the region of mind 
and soul is not a separate domain at 
all, but, subject to the same laws, 
only a sublimer part of the same 
familiar territory. 

37 



C^ e MitiQ horn 



The Poet is a Prophet and a Seer, 
because he knows this. His inspired 
soul has always thrilled with the con- 
sciousness of this identity between the 
seen and the unseen. By swift in- 
tuition and at a bound, he long ago 
ascended the ladder which Science 
has laboriously constructed, and with 
heavy steps is trying to climb. 

Shakspeare had never heard of 
" vibratory physics," nor "ultra musi- 
cal silence." But his sensitive soul 
needed no science to teach him 
Nature's secret, when he made 
Lorenzo utter these words to the 
fair Jessica : 

" Look, how the floor of Heaven 

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold. 

There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest, 

But in his motion like an angel sings. 

Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubims. 

Such harmony is in immortal souls ( '/J, 

But whils't this muddy vesture of decay 

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." 



38 



of tfr e ginbfgf ble 

And if Poetry in its profoundest 
depths is scientific, has not Science 
itself grown into the sublimest poetry 
when it tells us the foundations of 
the universe are laid in music ; that 
Love is its architect ; and that a har- 
monious combination of numbers is 
all that marks the difference between 
chaos and cosmos, or Heaven and 
Hell ! Did ever poet make a wilder 
or sublimer utterance than that ? 

But it is quite true that the world 
cannot grow upon sublime theories 
nor utterances. These must be trans- 
lated into plain, simple, practical 
truths for everyday use. And this 
is precisely what the new conception 
concerning natural forces has done. 
The business of Science has been to 
make a practicable highway — a high- 
way of the concrete, not the ab- 
stract — for the feet of humanity to 
tread as it climbs upward. And 

39 



Ctye feittg&om 



splendidly has she achieved this task, 
and vindicated her right to be. When 
Pythagoras divined that "harmony 
and numbers'" were all, when — with- 
out any scientific ladder leading inevi- 
tably to such a conclusion — he made 
that inspired guess, he also taught 
that the seven notes of the musical 
scale were only a symbol of the choral 
sung by the seven planets. More than 
two thousand years later, Science, 
having not divined, but laboriously 
discovered, the same truth, did not 
rhapsodize about the music of the 
spheres, but said to a toiling world : 
" There are legions of giants all about 
you, ready and waiting to lift your 
burdens. You cannot see them ; but 
they are here, there, everywhere. 
Stronger than a million horses, fleeter 
than anything but thought, and with 
potencies eternity cannot exhaust. 
Make them your slaves ! " 
40 



Then came the age of transform- 
ing miracles, each more wonderful 
than the last ; swiftly dropping by 
the way more and more of the cum- 
bersome equipment needed for the 
work; until now — with no connecting 
wire — with only a transmitter at one 
end and a receiver at the other, the 
message flies straight as an arrow to 
a delicately constructed ear, which 
is listening one hundred and fifty 
miles away ! Why? Why does it go 
to the ear on the Nantucket Light- 
ship, and not to some other and more 
accessible point ? For the same rea- 
son that the human soul struggles to 
reach the Divine centre — because 
a rhythmic affinity compels it / 

This was the whole truth as we 
knew it when it was written ten days 
ago. But such magic is there in the 
agency of this sympathetic force that 
the fact was outgrowing the state- 
41 



C^ t fei ng Horn 



ment, even while the words were be- 
ing written, and for one hundred and 
fifty miles I must now write two 
thousand miles. This in the infancy 
of the process! Who dare place a 
limit upon its maturity? 

Now what remains to be done ? 
Only to drop the transmitter and the 
receiver, and send the thought on its 
own wings, confident that it will go 
where it is sympathetically attuned, 
v The magic which has transformed 
modern life came with the use of 
invisible agents, and has increased 
as we have penetrated deeper and 
deeper into the Invisible Kingdom. 
If, as is believed, the twentieth cen- 
tury is destined to transcend the 
nineteenth in achievement, that is to 
be done — unless there is a strange 
break in the line of progression 
already pursued — by drawing upon 
the resources of a still more atten- 
42 



of tfre 3jnfefgiMe 

uated, a stilt more superlative ether, 
and a still more mighty and subtle 
form of energy. And what can that 
be, if not that all subduing motion 
which we know as Thought, and 
which in its highest manifestation 
we call Prayer? 

So, to the Heavenly Host observ- 
ing human development, not as a 
succession of events, but as a proc- 
ess, the archangels have watched 
their royal prisoner as he grew to 
manhood ; have seen him slowly forg- 
ing his way through the entangling 
wrappings of matter — that muddy 
vesture of decay which grossly 
hedged him in. They saw him grad- 
ually emancipating himself, until at 
last free as a young gladiator, he 
emerged, and springing into the air, 
grasped its atomic forces for his prac- 
tical uses. Then swiftly outgrowing 

43 



Cfre &mgt?om of t^e giitfttgtble 

the air, they beheld him as he seized 
the greater forces pulsating in the 
ether and compel them to draw his 
burdens, light and warm his cities and 
energize all the activities of life. 

Then there seemed to catch his 
ear whisperings from a still more sub- 
limated region. His soul had begun 
to vibrate responsively to a still 
higher and mightier range of activi- 
ties and potencies. And the arch- 
angles smiled as they whispered : 

" He is beginning to find out that 
he is Godlike ! " 

LofC. 



44 



MAR 2 6 1902 



MAR 26 1902 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS % 
1 



029 786 889 5 



